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We are going to do that in the new year, but in the early days our focus had to be on trying to support the radeonhd development team at Novell/SuSE. We have weekly calls with them and work through lists of open questions and issues, although it's only recently (since Alex joined us) that we have really been able to keep up with their questions.

Bridgman, are you a developer of ATI/AMD linux driver team? If the case, I hope you would look back R3xx Users who were left behind the support of fglrx. I use mobility radeon 9600 on my ThinkPad T42, and with fglrx it DOES NOT suspend, wake up. With AIGLX on, Compiz works but average responsiveness of all app is totally unusable(eg, firefox scrolling, multi-tasking...).

FYI, I think the "kind person" who provided info on the fglrx release cycle was actually Matthew -- I only became involved in the Linux side when we started the recent open source initiative. Our Linux development cycle was mid-way through a major transition when that article was written so it's probably time for an update. I think the Q&A will probably answer most of the questions.

You deserve the title of "kind person" yourself as well with that thorough response.
Thanks!

I hope you would look back R3xx Users who were left behind the support of fglrx. I use mobility radeon 9600 on my ThinkPad T42, and with fglrx it DOES NOT suspend, wake up.

I don't think you were "left behind" as an R3xx user -- from what I can see some users of newer chips are reporting similar problems. R3xx users should benefit from many of the fixes made for newer ASICs, in the same way that going to the new OpenGL code base improved performance for R3xx and R4xx users as well, not just 5xx/6xx owners.

One of the major challenges the Linux driver team had been facing for years was that it took all of their resources and more just to keep up with the introduction of new ASICs, particularly ones with significant architectural changes like the R5xx and R6xx series. For the last year or so their focus has been moving from Linux-specific code to using a fair amount of common code *inside* the same fglrx driver shell. The only benefits you would have seen from that work so far are improved OpenGL performance, initial AIGLX support and more timely support of new ASICs (HD3850/70 as an example), but an important "invisible" benefit is that the Linux team now has to spend relatively less time supporting new ASICs and can start to spend time improving the Linux-specific portions of the driver itself.

You should see more Linux-specific improvements in 2008 -- 2007 was really a transition year where a lot of the work being done by the driver teams did not immediately result in user-visible improvements. We weren't planning to talk much about this until you started to see the results on your systems, but there are some common questions from our Linux users that we are going to try to answer in the new year.

Originally Posted by gazrang

With AIGLX on, Compiz works but average responsiveness of all app is totally unusable(eg, firefox scrolling, multi-tasking...).

re: Firefox scrolling, I believe there is one specific format conversion in the driver which we need to optimize in order to improve handling of big windows in general. I don't know the details (something about different formats for textures and graphics windows) but apparently it's rarely used except when running Compiz. In the meantime, I think everyone knows to turn off smooth scrolling in Firefox but for those who have not it apparently makes a big difference.

Originally Posted by Swoopy

You deserve the title of "kind person" yourself as well with that thorough response.

"would not recommend" ...

Bridgman - this kind of enlightening dialog is exactly what I and I guess many others have been missing all along! Thanx for taking your time and being so informative!

Of course we do not expect you to smurf around in forums and give detailed input and promise bug-fixes all day long, just give us some insight into the process and provide us with some realistic expectations. Us FOSS buffs take openness for granted these days and any message or request that goes unanswered for 24 hours sparkles fear, anger and hatred ;-)

As you all know, many of us have invested quite a lot of money in our computer platforms and use them not only for gaming or trivial desktop tasks, but also for our own work.

I guess my specific case is not unique around here. I bought my Thinkpad Z61m with an X1400 for about $2000 about a year ago as a desktop replacement for both private and scientific use, and it is not that I can replace the graphics card for a hundred bucks if I am unhappy with it. It really is a great machine. When I bought it the 2.6.20 kernel + 8.35.5 fglrx combo worked quite well, but as kernel development progressed and I needed to upgrade to get new features and hardware support, I could only watch in despair how the later graphics drivers progressively got worse over the year - I've lost XVideo, OpenGL due to the memory leak, suspend-to-ram and support for the native resolution of the laptop LCD, in different combinations in different driver releases. Instead I've had freezes and on-screen artifacts. We're not talking about loosing 50 fps in glxgears, but problems defeating the whole purpose of getting the laptop in the first place - and no real info form AMD/ATi that things were going to get any better in the near future. I know that I have a nice chip and laptop that in theory should be able to play HD material and modern 3D games, none of which have manifested themselves well in practice.

But now for the first time I feel that 2008 really has much to offer for us AMD/ATi users - the open drivers are coming along nicely, there are new documents to be released, a forum/blog/site for interaction between the developers and users to be opened and devs like Bridgman are demonstrating impressive patience with our rants here at Phoronix.

Hey, I would second a blog over the fglrx progress. Dell made one when Michael Dell took over as CEO with their Direct2Dell propaganda. Personally, I think it's very informative and is pretty effective and clearing up FUD since there are less rumors and more facts. Plus, when there is a human connection to a corporation, it is easier to comprehend the obstacles the company is trying to get over, thus less overall "this company sucks because they're not doing this and that" posts everywhere.

7.12 really upset me over the resolution issue. I would be pretty pissed off, but the fact that someone is here discussing things makes me feel a lot better. I've gone through 3 ATI cards in my desktop, and the family computer downstairs is still chugging away with a rage 128 pro, lol.

Anyways, I appreciate the fact that there's someone here who gives a sh*t about fgrlx and can actually do something about it besides write angry forum posts. It makes me feel a lot better.